


Driving in Cars With Your Best Frenemy

by capalxii



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3539378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capalxii/pseuds/capalxii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr user shuttetyupupup prompted Malcolm x Julius car-bickering that ends in fluff and kisses, and a month later I failed & delivered car-bickering that ends in hopeful angst and no kisses instead. Cleaned up & expanded from the original Tumblr post.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Driving in Cars With Your Best Frenemy

**Author's Note:**

> The actual prompt: "I have a prompt for you! Malcolm and Julius in a car. Julius wants to listen to classical music, Malcolm (who's driving) wants the radio on. Intense arguing ensues, but it all ends with kisses and fluff."
> 
> This fic basically has the car, the music, and the characters, but time-skips through a relationship and ends post-series.

[1999]

It’s a long drive, and normally they’d have a driver take them but there’s a sense in the party of “austerity” and “savings opportunities” and, in the words of the man behind the wheel, “being cum-brained cheapfuckingskates” and so Malcolm is transporting them and Julius is white-knuckling the dark interior of a moderately priced, moderately boring hatchback that feels a few years past its prime. To be fair to Malcolm, it probably came off the factory line feeling that way, and it is through no fault of the driver (except for his own unwillingness to buy a vehicle befitting his rising station rather than one befitting his penchant for personal budgeting) that the cramped vehicle both terrifies and stultifies his passenger in equal amounts.

Scrabbling vainly for some form of relief, Julius paws at what he thinks might be the radio tuner, only to feel a sharp swat on his hand. “Keep your sticky bollock-ticklers to yourself, I want to hear this.”

News radio for the next three hours; Julius could barely deal. Especially when he is Julius Nicholson, being driven by—well, Tucker isn’t even Fleming’s lackey, is he? He's Fleming’s lackey’s lackey. “They’ve been reporting the same thing on a loop for the past half hour, it would do us no harm to listen to something more engaging.”

“I know what your ‘engaging’ is, you wank.” Tucker glares at him from the side of his eyes and says, “Old dead rich fuckers writing dull meaningless shit for other old dead rich fuckers. Let me listen to that, I’ll fall asleep and drive off a fucking bridge, then you’ll be an old dead rich fucker too.”

“It’s not meaning—I am not old, Malcolm,” he snaps. “In fact, I believe I’m a full decade younger than you.”

“And don’t you forget it, whelp,” Malcolm mutters darkly. “My car, my radio, my rules, kid.”  
Julius sits back, sheepish, momentarily stunned, more than minorly annoyed at playing into Malcolm’s hand like that, and, much as he hates to admit it, a tiny bit impressed at his grit.

[2004]

Everything beyond the headlights’ hazy throw looks like murky ink, and as the road begins to hypnotize him, Julius can imagine them driving underwater. It’s a near thing with the way the rain is coming down around them; the wipers scrape out a tempo on the windscreen, the radio plays something just barely out of sync, just barely off, but somehow it works with the rough tangle of guitars and scratchy vocals.

This night, they can’t let anyone know who they’re meeting. It’s a cliché that’s based in truth sometimes, this idea of party decisions being made in back rooms and isolated old homes, and Malcolm is stony-faced as he grips the wheel of his car. He’s upgraded since the last time he drove Julius anywhere. This vehicle is certified “quite nice,” well-appointed and subtly luxurious, leather seats and soft curves surrounding the two of them as they push through the night.

“Do you mind if I-”

“Yes,” Malcolm says. “I mind. Your taste in driving music makes me want to top myself. Not listening to it, mind you, just the sheer knowledge of what your taste actually is.”

“It’s really not that bad,” Julius says. “I think you’re overreacting.”

“I think you can Rachmani-cock-off and shut it, Baldy.”

Julius blinks; he had only mentioned Rachmaninoff once, hours ago, in passing, and the fact that Malcolm had thought to make an incomprehensible yet vaguely threatening statement using his name is not lost on him. “You were listening to me,” he says with some wonder.

“What? You’re crazy.”

“I told you that I was looking forward to an album I’d recently purchased and you remembered,” Julius says with a grin, “and now you’re making disturbing sexual remarks with that information. I can’t believe you actually listened.”

“I didn’t listen,” Malcolm says; he sounds almost petulant, though Julius is willing to accept that the lonely road might be playing tricks on his hearing. “Why would I listen to you of all people.”

“Of course,” he says, his own grin feeling more permanent as he settles back into his seat. “Quite right, you weren’t listening at all. My mistake.”

It might be weariness, nerves, or a trick of the dim light, but Julius swears he sees a creeping pink on Malcolm’s pale cheeks.

[2008]

“No.”

“This is my car, Malcolm,” Julius tuts.

“And I’m driving it.”

“Only because—well—why are you driving, again?”

“Out of the goodness of my heart,” Malcolm says, “and because I need a hostage.”

Julius rolls his eyes. He’s known Malcolm long enough, he thinks, to be able to tell if he’s about to throw someone under the bus. Rather, he hopes he’s known him long enough. At minimum, he knows Malcolm would never be open about it, so he feels he’s possibly safe as a hostage in whatever situation Malcolm is bringing them to. “A hostage for what, exactly?”

“My sister keeps pestering me to bring home a nice stray for housebreaking,” he says grimly.

“So I’m listening to the music I like for the duration of the trip, and you’re playing nice unless you’re the kind of masochist who’d like his entire career fucked with un-lubed rusted rebar and beaten with a termite-infested wooden post.”

“Bring home a-” Julius blinks, blinks some more, and wobbles his mouth open and closed like some kind of follicle-challenged fish. Which is basically all fish, he realizes. “I’m sorry, am I pretending to be—Malcolm, please tell me this isn’t—you stole my car and kidnapped me-”

Malcolm takes his eyes off the road briefly and flashes him the warmest, sweetest, most unsettlingly realistic fake-grin he’s ever seen in his life. “Darling, I know it’s short notice and you’re a wee bit nervous, but I’m sure they’ll love you as much as I do,” he says, his voice low and syrupy. “Just let me listen to my music, yeah?”

Julius thinks that if some beast were to crawl up out of his throat, slime its way over his head, and suffocate him as he sits in the passenger seat, it would be less uncomfortable than the realization that that smile, with those words, from that man, had made his heart skip a beat, in spite of the knowledge that it was all a lie. Oh no, he thinks to himself, and leans back with his eyes glued to the road ahead. Oh very much no.

[2010]

This is an accident, a mistake. There's a mix-up in who's going in which car; Julius is supposed to be in a car with the insufferable Reeder, but when he climbs into the back Malcolm is already there. Julius is too proud and too stubborn to get out and find another car, and at any rate it's snowing and getting darker by the minute, so he sits and stares at his Blackberry until the driver starts moving.

He's still bitter, he finds, of Malcolm taking his olive branch and using it to unseat Fleming—an unintended consequence of making alliances with a viper, Julius knows, and it's partially his own fault for ever trying to maneuver between the two in the first place. He shouldn't be bitter. It's business and he's not himself wholly clean.

Just as he thinks to speak up, to make some kind of idle chit-chat and come off like a colleague rather than as someone who'd been avoiding enclosed spaces with Malcolm for the better part of a year, Malcolm looks directly at him with sharp, cold eyes and tells their driver to please switch the radio from the classical station to news. “Nothing personal,” Malcolm says to him. “I'd just prefer to listen to this.”

The feel of banter is missing, the sense of antagonistic camaraderie has become strictly antagonistic. Malcolm's face tells Julius all he needs to know: months ago, when Julius had reached out a hand in companionship and Malcolm had used that very hand against his plans, it had been more than just business. Whatever foothold he'd had in Malcolm's world, he's out of it now. It hurts more than it should, and no matter how much he reminds himself that he's above it, he can't wash away that sting. “As you wish,” he murmurs.

[2014]

Time hasn’t been particularly good to Malcolm. Or, Julius thinks, he’s only remembering a different Malcolm—it’s been years since he’d been willing to look the man in the eyes, to speak to him, to be in the same room as him. Perhaps he’s always looked this drawn. Perhaps Julius just hadn’t been hateful enough to notice before.

Still, time hasn’t been good to him, and he’s a wreck of sharp bones under fragile skin, dull eyes and hair cropped too close to his skull, sitting in the passenger seat as Julius chauffeurs. He’s not even sure why he’d agreed, except Sam had asked as a favor and no matter what had happened between Malcolm and himself, he’d never been able to say no to that girl.

Once upon a time, he’d thought he might have had some kind of silly crush on the man. An idle fantasy, built upon an idea of a person who hadn’t existed. It had been dashed against the rocks almost as soon as it had been realized, and the heartbreak of a what-could-have-been was nearly as bad as any other heartbreak he’d known.

The wreck beside him asks, “Sam asked you to come get me, didn’t she?”

“No. Of course not, I haven’t spoken to her in some time,” he says. “When I found out you were being released, I came on my own.”

“Okay,” Malcolm says. As though he actually believes Julius, or as though he’s not willing to argue; Julius isn’t quite sure which is the more disturbing possibility. “Where’re we going?”

Julius takes a left turn, mentally tracking how long it will take to Malcolm’s place. “I’m taking you home.”

“That’s good.”

He nearly asks if prison could really have been that bad. It had been an open prison, a just-ended short sentence, one that could barely even be talked about in their circles with any sense of superiority after all the other revelations that had come out of the inquiry—after all the other politicians, party members, reporters that had been shown as part of the very same machine, no better than Malcolm himself.

But he stops himself short as Malcolm reaches for the radio. His hands are slow, the long fingers hesitant as they find the station they’re searching for. From the corner of his eye, Julius can see the tense line of his neck, the furrow in his brow as he dials through jumbled clips of disconnected noise, the relief as he exhales through parted lips when he settles on something slow and sweetly aching. It’s a piece Julius knows, one he remembers from his youth, sitting and watching his older sister with their violin teacher; he’d never mastered it himself, having been lacking in any kind of real musical ability himself, but it brings him back to a place of safety and warmth.

Once upon a time, he thinks with a grim little smile, before he could learn what it meant to be gutted, to be played. “Your tastes have changed, have they?” he asks.

“Your car, your rules,” Malcolm says. “You don’t have to keep it off on my account.”

There’s a rest in the piece, and the wreck sinks into his seat and swallows loud enough that Julius can hear him. “Are you trying to win my pity?” he asks. “Good to see you’re as calculating as ever. I’d think something were wrong if you weren’t.”

It’s a test, but Julius isn’t sure what the correct response would be. “Yeah,” Malcolm says. “Figured you’d be easy to play. Always were soft as a pensioner’s prick.”

“You shoved everyone away from you,” Julius says, “for years. You regret it now, don't you? Don't you wish you didn't?”

“No.” Julius almost takes his eyes off the road to look at him, a real danger considering how late it is. “I defended myself. Nobody else would have. You have to protect yourself. That means you eliminate threats, doesn't it. You, Jamie, fucking Glenn, all of them.”

He can't help being a little testy, feeling a little sharpness in his chest over the frank admission. “And what did that get you?”

Malcolm quietly says, "You think I wanted to do that? It got me what I needed at the time. Protection, ammunition, that's what it got me. Got me what I needed."

Sam had asked a favor of him. Show him he still has friends, she’d said. Julius had thought she’d meant allies, comrades in arms, party members who’d welcome him back into the professional fold sooner rather than later. Sparing a glance at Malcolm, he thinks he might have misread her. If Julius had learned what it meant to be gutted, the man next to him looks like he had learned a hollowing-out, an erosion that left exhaustion and submission and paranoia in its wake, and Julius wonders if the person he’d thought hadn’t existed had simply been suffocating for years. This had started, he realizes, long before the inquiry. "And what do you need now?"

There's no response. Julius waits it out, measures of music and broken white lines on the road giving the only senses of passing time. It takes a moment for him to understand a response isn't coming. He reaches over until his hand brushes against Malcolm’s neck; he misses his turn, misses the next, and keeps driving until they’re home.


End file.
